Hypergraphical t-designs

We introduce a theory of hypergraphical t-designs. We show the existence of these designs and prove a finiteness theorem on these designs for infinitely many parameter sets. We also give effective bounds on the number of points in these cases. These results generalize some results on graphical t-designs of Alltop, Chee and Betten-Klin-Laue-Wassermann.     

Designs in Product Association Schemes

A number of important families of association schemes—such as the Hamming and Johnson schemes—enjoy the property that, in each member of the family, Delsarte t-designs can be characterised combinatorially as designs in a certain partially ordered set attached to the scheme. In this paper, we extend this characterisation to designs in a product association scheme each of whose components admits a characterisation of the above type. As a consequence of our main result, we immediately obtain linear programming bounds for a wide variety of combinatorial objects as well as bounds on the size and degree of such designs analogous to Delsarte's bounds for t-designs in Q-polynomial association schemes.     

Relative <Emphasis Type="Italic">t</Emphasis>-designs in binary Hamming association scheme <Emphasis Type="Italic">H</Emphasis>(<Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>, 2)

A relative t-design in the binary Hamming association schemes H(n, 2) is equivalent to a weighted regular t-wise balanced design, i.e., certain combinatorial t-design which allows different sizes of blocks and a weight function on blocks. In this paper, we study relative t-designs in H(n, 2), putting emphasis on Fisher type inequalities and the existence of tight relative t-designs. We mostly consider relative t-designs on two shells. We prove that if the weight function is constant on each shell of a relative t-design on two shells then the subset in each shell must be a combinatorial \((t-1)\)-design. This is a generalization of the result of Kageyama who proved this under the stronger assumption that the weight function is constant on the whole block set. Using this, we define tight relative t-designs for odd t, and a strong restriction on the possible parameters of tight relative t-designs in H(n, 2). We obtain a new family of such tight relative t-designs, which were unnoticed before. We will give a list of feasible parameters of such relative 3-designs with \(n \le 100\), and then we discuss the existence and/or the non-existence of such tight relative 3-designs. We also discuss feasible parameters of tight relative 4-designs on two shells in H(n, 2) with \(n \le 50\). In this study we come up with the connection on the topics of classical design theory, such as symmetric 2-designs (in particular 2-\((4u-1,2u-1,u-1)\) Hadamard designs) and Driessen’s result on the non-existence of certain 3-designs. We believe Problems 1 and 2 presented in Sect. 5.2 open a new way to study relative t-designs in H(n, 2). We conclude our paper listing several open problems.     

On secant varieties of compact Hermitian symmetric spaces

We show that the secant varieties of rank three compact Hermitian symmetric spaces in their minimal homogeneous embeddings are normal, with rational singularities. We show that their ideals are generated in degree three—with one exception, the secant variety of the 21-dimensional spinor variety in P⁶³ where we show that the ideal is generated in degree four. We also discuss the coordinate rings of secant varieties of compact Hermitian symmetric spaces.     

Geometry of the Welch bounds

A geometric perspective involving Grammian and frame operators is used to derive the entire family of Welch bounds. This perspective unifies a number of observations that have been made regarding tightness of the bounds and their connections to symmetric k-tensors, tight frames, homogeneous polynomials, and t-designs. In particular, a connection has been drawn between sampling of homogeneous polynomials and frames of symmetric k-tensors. It is also shown that tightness of the bounds requires tight frames. The lack of tight frames of symmetric k-tensors in many cases, however, leads to consideration of sets that come as close as possible to attaining the bounds. The geometric derivation is then extended in the setting of generalized or continuous frames. The Welch bounds for finite sets and countably infinite sets become special cases of this general setting.     

Unifying some known infinite families of combinatorial 3-designs

In this paper we present a construction of 3-designs by using a 3-design with resolvability. The basic construction generalizes a well-known construction of simple 3-(v,4,3) designs by Jungnickel and Vanstone (1986). We investigate the conditions under which the designs obtained by the basic construction are simple. Many infinite families of simple 3-designs are presented, which are closely related to some known families by Iwasaki and Meixner (1995), Laue (2004) and van Tran (2000, 2001). On the other hand, the designs obtained by the basic construction possess various properties: A theory of constructing simple cyclic 3-(v,4,3) designs by Köhler (1981) can be readily rebuilt from the context of this paper. Moreover many infinite families of simple resolvable 3-designs are presented in comparison with some known families. We also show that for any prime power q and any odd integer n there exists a resolvable 3-(qn+1,q+1,1) design. As far as the authors know, this is the first and the only known infinite family of resolvable t-(v,k,1) designs with t?3 and k?5. Those resolvable designs can again be used to obtain more infinite families of simple 3-designs through the basic construction.     

On the structure of 1-designs with at most two block intersection numbers

We introduce the notion of an unrefinable decomposition of a 1-design with at most two block intersection numbers, which is a certain decomposition of the 1-designs collection of blocks into other 1-designs. We discover an infinite family of 1-designs with at most two block intersection numbers that each have a unique unrefinable decomposition, and we give a polynomial-time algorithm to compute an unrefinable decomposition for each such design from the family. Combinatorial designs from this family include: finite projective planes of order n; SOMAs, and more generally, partial linear spaces of order (s, t) on (s + 1)² points; as well as affine designs, and more generally, strongly resolvable designs with no repeated blocks.      

The heat kernel transform for the Heisenberg group

The heat kernel transform H_t is studied for the Heisenberg group in detail. The main result shows that the image of H_t is a direct sum of two weighted Bergman spaces, in contrast to the classical case of Rⁿ and compact symmetric spaces, and the weight functions are found to be (surprisingly) not non-negative.     

Norms of zonal spherical functions and Fourier series on compact symmetric spaces

New estimates are given for the p-norms of zonal spherical functions on compact symmetric spaces. These estimates are applied to give a Cohen type inequality for convolutor norms which leads to negative results on p-mean convergence of Fourier series on compact symmetric spaces of arbitrary rank.     

Infinite families of 3-designs from a type of five-weight code

It has been known for a long time that t-designs can be employed to construct both linear and nonlinear codes and that the codewords of a fixed weight in a code may hold a t-design. While a lot of progress in the direction of constructing codes from t-designs has been made, only a small amount of work on the construction of t-designs from codes has been done. The objective of this paper is to construct infinite families of 2-designs and 3-designs from a type of binary linear codes with five weights. The total number of 2-designs and 3-designs obtained in this paper are exponential in any odd m and the block size of the designs varies in a huge range.     

Nonexistence of nontrivial tight 8-designs

Tight t-designs are t-designs whose sizes achieve the Fisher type lower bound. We give a new necessary condition for the existence of nontrivial tight designs and then use it to show that there do not exist nontrivial tight 8-designs.     

Embeddable transversal designs

The embeddability of certain (group) divisible designs in symmetric 2-designs is investigated. These designs are symmetric resolvable transversal designs. It is proved that all such transversal designs with v = 2k are embeddable and some necessary and sufficient conditions for other cases are given.     

Computational complexity of reconstruction and isomorphism testing for designs and line graphs

Graphs with high symmetry or regularity are the main source for experimentally hard instances of the notoriously difficult graph isomorphism problem. In this paper, we study the computational complexity of isomorphism testing for line graphs of t-(v,k,λ) designs. For this class of highly regular graphs, we obtain a worst-case running time of O(vlogv+O(1)) for bounded parameters t, k, λ.In a first step, our approach makes use of the Babai-Luks algorithm to compute canonical forms of t-designs. In a second step, we show that t-designs can be reconstructed from their line graphs in polynomial-time. The first is algebraic in nature, the second purely combinatorial. For both, profound structural knowledge in design theory is required. Our results extend earlier complexity results about isomorphism testing of graphs generated from Steiner triple systems and block designs.     

t12-Designs

Every (t + 1)-design $\text{B}$ satisfies (+) If T is a set of t points, and B a block of $\text{B}$ then the number α(T, B) of flags (x, A) with x?T, x?B, T ∪ {x} ? A depends only on |T ∩ B|.A t-design with property (+) is called a $\text{t}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{design}$. The most interesting general classes of t-designs are $\text{t}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{designs}$: Hadamard 3-designs are $\text{3}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{designs}$, symmetric 2-designs are $\text{2}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{designs}$, and dual 2-designs, transversal designs, and partial geometries are $\text{1}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{designs}$; in fact, $\text{1}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{designs}$ share most properties of partial geometries.$\text{1}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{designs}$ are studied in detail, and their connection with strongly regular graphs is investigated.It is shown that $\text{t}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{designs}$ behave like t-designs with respect to derivation, residuals, and complementation.Various characterizations of partial geometries, generalized quadrangles, symmetric 2-designs, and Hadamard 3-designs are given in terms of $\text{t}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{designs}$.The paper ends with a proof that $\text{t}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{designs}$ with t ? 4 are already (t + 1)-designs.     

A census of highly symmetric combinatorial designs

As a consequence of the classification of the finite simple groups, it has been possible in recent years to characterize Steiner t-designs, that is t-(v,k,1) designs, mainly for t=2, admitting groups of automorphisms with sufficiently strong symmetry properties. However, despite the finite simple group classification, for Steiner t-designs with t>2 most of these characterizations have remained long-standing challenging problems. Especially, the determination of all flag-transitive Steiner t-designs with 3≤t≤6 is of particular interest and has been open for about 40 years (cf. Delandtsheer (Geom. Dedicata 41, p. 147, 1992 and Handbook of Incidence Geometry, Elsevier Science, Amsterdam, 1995, p. 273), but presumably dating back to 1965). The present paper continues the author’s work (see Huber (J. Comb. Theory Ser. A 94, 180–190, 2001; Adv. Geom. 5, 195–221, 2005; J. Algebr. Comb., 2007, to appear)) of classifying all flag-transitive Steiner 3-designs and 4-designs. We give a complete classification of all flag-transitive Steiner 5-designs and prove furthermore that there are no non-trivial flag-transitive Steiner 6-designs. Both results rely on the classification of the finite 3-homogeneous permutation groups. Moreover, we survey some of the most general results on highly symmetric Steiner t-designs.      

The number of designs with geometric parameters grows exponentially

It is well-known that the number of 2-designs with the parameters of a classical point-hyperplane design PG _n-1(n, q) grows exponentially. Here we extend this result to the number of 2-designs with the parameters of PG _d (n, q), where 2 ≤ d ≤ n ? 1. We also establish a characterization of the classical geometric designs in terms of hyperplanes and, in the special case d = 2, also in terms of lines. Finally, we shall discuss some interesting configurations of hyperplanes arising in designs with geometric parameters.     

Extending t-designs

Three extension theorems for t-designs are proved; two for t even, and one for t odd. Another theorem guaranteeing that certain t-designs be (t + 1)-designs is presented. The extension theorem for odd t is used to show that every group of odd order 2k + 1, k ≠ 2^r ? 1, acts as an automorphism group of a 2-(2k + 2, k + 1, λ) design consisting of exactly one half of the (k + 1)-settled, Although the question of the existence of a 6-(14, 7, 4) design is not settled, certain requisite properties of the 4-designs on 12 elements derived from such a design are established. All of these results depend heavily upon generalizations of block intersection number equations of N. S. Mendelsohn.     

A recursive construction for simple <Emphasis Type="Italic">t</Emphasis>-designs using resolutions

This work presents a recursive construction for simple t-designs using resolutions of the ingredient designs. The result extends a construction of t-designs in our recent paper van Trung (Des Codes Cryptogr 83:493–502, 2017). Essentially, the method in van Trung (Des Codes Cryptogr 83:493–502, 2017) describes the blocks of a constructed design as a collection of block unions from a number of appropriate pairs of disjoint ingredient designs. Now, if some pairs of these ingredient t-designs have both suitable s-resolutions, then we can define a distance mapping on their resolution classes. Using this mapping enables us to have more possibilities for forming blocks from those pairs. The method makes it possible for constructing many new simple t-designs. We give some application results of the new construction.     

The Helgason Fourier transform for homogeneous vector bundles over compact Riemannian symmetric spaces—the local theory

The Helgason Fourier transform on noncompact Riemannian symmetric spaces G/K is generalized to the homogeneous vector bundles over the compact dual spaces U/K. The scalar theory on U/K was considered by Sherman (the local theory for U/K of arbitrary rank, and the global theory for U/K of rank one). In this paper we extend the local theory of Sherman to arbitrary homogeneous vector bundles on U/K. For U/K of rank one we also obtain a generalization of the Cartan-Helgason theorem valid for any K-type.     

Studying designs via multisets

A new method to study families of finite sets, in particular t-designs, by studying families of multisets (also called lists) and their relationships with families of sets, is developed. Notion of the tag for a subset defined earlier by one of the authors is extended to a submultiset. A new concept t-(v, k, λ) list design is defined and studied. Basic existence theory for designs is extended to a new set up of list designs. In particular tags are used to prove that signed t-list designs exist whenever necessary conditions are satisfied. The concepts of homomorphisms and block spreading are extended to this new set up.